Getting There: Martha Johnson

In Washington, where professional swings are tracked like sports standings, nothing draws the spotlight quite like a Painfully Public Career Implosion.

Last week, the hot seat belonged to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, who stepped down following widespread reports that VA hospitals falsified waiting lists. Two years before that, it was Martha Johnson, who was forced to resign as head of the General Services Administration after an Inspector General report revealed a flagrant misuse of taxpayer dollars on a Las Vegas conference that was dubbed excessive and wasteful.

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The daughter of a Presbyterian minister and activist for migrant workers, Johnson, 62, was born in Connecticut, moving as a child to the West Coast, then to North Dakota and finally to an all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts before attending Oberlin College in Ohio. After a gig as an executive consultant for a former classmate, Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s, Johnson joined the Clinton administration for both terms, the last five years as the General Service Administration’s chief of staff. When President Barack Obama took office and tapped Johnson to head the agency, her nomination drew a 96-0 Senate approval vote.

What came next: a period of reflection, followed by a series of second acts. Since her government career ended, she’s written two books — a deeply personal self-help book and a novel — and currently works as a public speaker, blogger and consultant. What she says she’s learned: While not everyone goes through as painful a public setback as she did, everyone can relate to the experience of “getting smashed up against a wall,” Beltway-style — and surviving.

What were some of the hardest things about going through such a personal setback in a very public way?

There are many parts of it that were very painful and very sad for me. I have to say my overwhelming feeling afterwards is still one of sadness. I had had seven years working with that organization, and I was a real member of GSA, and so some of the loss was personal in the sense that I was losing a community of people that I worked with. I would say it was very difficult going through the congressional hearings, and sort of being the channel for all of the political storm that was going on at that point. I was clearly the figurehead for that. And to have to resign and then go through congressional hearings was not my favorite experience by a long shot. But I always had a lot of sense that I had a bigger life, I had a lot of things that I could return to and a big network of friends.

What is some advice for others who have gone through similar situations?

I came out [of the scandal] with some philosophies about it. The first is, you have to have a network at a time like that and you don’t create your network in the crisis. One of the things that I did was, I created a network over my whole work environment. And that has paid off. They helped me be realistic about [the situation]. And there were also people who, interestingly, were very angry for me. They were very upset about this — and some continue to this day — and in some ways, they allowed me to offload my anger on them. So I was able to emerge in many ways because I had a strong network. And of course, I had a really strong family.

One of the big things that happened to me that I talk about with a lot of people — because I think it’s very important for me, and I think it resonates with people — is that I have a pretty solid creative life. And I think people need to cultivate that throughout their lives. I really believe in the arts or cooking or gardening, or whatever your expressions of yourself are. So when I left office, one thing I could turn to which was an enormously wonderful activity was to finish a novel that I had been working on. I had been writing it on the bus, actually, as I went from Annapolis to Washington, and I had never had the luxury or the time to really finish it and lock it up and get it out. So I turned to that that first summer, and I spent four or five months finishing that, and it was wonderful.

It was a wonderful way to change the subject; it allowed me to sort of surprise everybody back, like “I’m still here, you know.” But I think deeply that these creative processes allow you to have a voice, to be able to say back to the universe: “You know, losing a big job and going in front of a congressional hearing and being pretty exposed is pretty hard, but it doesn’t obliterate people, I still have a voice and I still have capability and I can go forward.” It brought a whole new conversation into my life.

The network piece and the creative piece are both important subjects for people to consider as they are sort of framing their lives, and thinking about the possibility with the risks and the failures and how to buffer, how to be sure you’re whole.